In a message dated 95-09-20 22:32:24 EDT, sj@io.com (Steve Jackson) writes:
>I switched back to "ceratopsian." As an editor of the old school, I weight
>"stylebook" authority heavily, so if the change had been in some sense
>official I would have gone with it. But if there has been (and will be) no
>"official" change in the nomenclature, I will go with the practice of 100
>years of science. Is that four generations of paleontologists, or five?
>Anyway, it's enough to sanction an originally incorrect usage just by
>custom, just as here in Austin the "right" way to pronounce the street
>named "Guadalupe" is "GWOD-a-loop," not "Hwod-a-LOO-pay." (You should see
>what Texans have done to "Jager" and "Bissonet." And trust me, you don't
>want to know how the natives of Etoile, Texas, pronounce it. But I
>digress.)
Fair enough--four (or five) generations of paleontologists just CAN'T be
wrong, yes!? What's so difficult about deleting a single lousy letter to make
an etymologically correct usage? You'd think I was recommending changing
"Ceratopsia" to "New Jersey" or something. This kind of perversity among
paleontologists, who routinely shake up each others' phylogenetic trees and
coin scores of new taxonomic names in a single paper, is absurd. Even
bizarre.
G.O.